The theme of arms dealing in Jonathan Coe's a carve up



Yulia Yaglova

Rostov State University; third-year student

The theme of arms dealing in Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up!

The novel “What a Carve Up!” is some kind of a parody or satire on the British society of the 1980-1990s. Here the author uses a very interesting method: in each chapter he describes the life of one character belonging to the Winshaws family. One important point is that it’s not the life of a character which the author is interested in but a particular aspect of the British life. It can be mass media (chapter “Hilary”), or politics (chapter “Henry”), or movies (chapter “Thomas”), etc. But we bear in mind the period of time which Jonathan Coe describes in his book (just look at the names of some chapters): the action takes place in 1982, 1990 and 1991. It’s the time when two cruel bloody wars were going on, and they have left their trace in the world history. These are the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988) and the Persian Gulf War (the core of this war was Kuwait which the author mentions many times in his narration). It was the conflict between Iraq and the USA which lasted for seven months (1990-1991). It was led by the United States and mandated by the United Nations in order to liberate Kuwait. And of course it is quite essential that one of the most important themes in the novel is the topic of arms dealing. The theme is closely connected with two characters: Mark Winshaw (an international trader with Iraq), who is involved in this business and sells arms to Saddam Hussein to help him and his army in this war (what’s more important, he knows Saddam personally) and Graham Packard, a student who lived with the protagonist in Joan’s house.

What we know about Graham is that he dreams of making movies after graduating from the college but now his main aim is to film a movie which would reveal secrets to the society. The movie about arms dealing becomes his real obsession after he meets Mark Winshaw and understands that he is his main object. “He <...> dreamed of the documentary he would one day make: a feature- length masterpiece using all of the cinema’s most dazzling resources, which would hold the world-dreamed capitalist conspiracy up to merciless, irresistible scrutiny. He dreamed, in particular, of making a film about the arms market... ” But unfortunately at that moment Graham didn’t think of people who were engaged in the dirty business and would finish off anyone who was standing in their way and who was a real obstacle for the progress of their business.

What do we know about Mark? It goes without saying that Mark is not different in any way from other members of his family: he is an absolutely unemotional person who thinks only of gaining money. One of the main points the author wants to emphasize here is that the war period what the most dreadful for the British society. But what do we observe? We see Mark’s strong desire to continue this war. This disguised arms dealer is delighted with war as it increases the amount of money he can make and the benefits he can get. And not only Mark sees great opportunity to earn as much money as possible here but also other members of his family. Henry, for example, who says in the conversation with Mark: “Guns, planes, missiles, bombs, bullets - you name it, he [Saddam Hussein] wants it, and if we aren’t prepared to sell then he’s just going to go to the French or the Germans or the Yanks or the Chinese. We can’t afford to let this opportunity slip. ”

There’s also a very significant point in the chapter, closely connected with Mark’s biography. The chapter reads that at first Mark studied at the faculty of law but then something happened and he said to his mother that he wanted to change the faculty and enroll as a student of chemistry engineering. I think we can find an explanation for this: it’s not his interest in science that made Mark change the faculty but the chance of making big money in the society he lived in. And the conditions for that were really perfect. However the theme of arms dealing is not the only one discussed in the chapter. Another very important issue is the dreadful methods used during those wars to kill the soldiers of the enemy’s army. Now it’s a widely-known and proved fact that Saddam Hussein was using different chemicals to kill Iranian soldiers. This was discovered not so long ago. And to be precise these secret documents were found in the USA National Security Archive during the time when Saddam Hussein was kept under the arrest. These papers also proved the alliance of Iraq and the USA with Saddam involved in the arms trade. And it was for that reason that Saddam was called “Baghdad butcher”.

So, Mark realised what advantages he could gain by studying chemistry. No wonder the author mentions many times the names of various chemicals. Take, for example, his conversation with one of Saddam’s allies when Mark was told: “You ’re a qualified engineer: a chemical engineer. I’m well aware that you’ve been instrumental in helping one of our largest firms to supply Iraq with quantities of Zyklon B, for instance. ” As to Zyklon B, it’s a kind of gas which can instantly kill a great number of people. This gas was used in Nazis camps during the Great Patriotic War to kill over one million people in gas chambers. And the author also says that there were special organizations (or plants) which produced different kinds of chemical weapons. Different organizations dealing with arms trade are also mentioned: organizations which took other names to hide the real aim of their alliance. One of such organizations is AESOP. The abbreviation stood for the Association of Europeans for Safety in Ordnance and Propellants. And later in the text we see that the organization had nothing to do with the research into safety measures. “It was an informal cartel of European arms dealers up to tackle one of the biggest problems posed by Iraq’s military requirements <...> a forum in which leading dealers from each of the member countries could get together and share the work out equitably among their own manufactures. ”